403 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2018
    1. “He ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me.

      ![](http://static.politifact.com/mediapage/jpgs/politifact-logo-big.jpg) ![](https://dhpikd1t89arn.cloudfront.net/rating_images/politifact/tom-false.jpg) Looking to put a positive spin on a stunning political upset, President Donald Trump said Democrat Conor Lamb — the yet-to-be-declared winner of last week’s closely watched special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district — "ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me." Trump made the comment at a private fundraiser for Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley a day after the March 13 election, The Washington Post reported. But did Lamb’s campaign actually say "very nice things" about the president, or was this an attempt to minimize a looming Republican loss in a reliably red district? What ... Mpre,...<br> (Published 2018-03-14)

    1. “He ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me.

      ![](http://static.politifact.com/mediapage/jpgs/politifact-logo-big.jpg) ![](https://dhpikd1t89arn.cloudfront.net/rating_images/politifact/tom-false.jpg) Looking to put a positive spin on a stunning political upset, President Donald Trump said Democrat Conor Lamb — the yet-to-be-declared winner of last week’s closely watched special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district — "ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me." Trump made the comment at a private fundraiser for Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley a day after the March 13 election, The Washington Post reported. But did Lamb’s campaign actually say "very nice things" about the president, or was this an attempt to minimize a looming Republican loss in a reliably red district? What ... Mpre,...<br> (Published 2018-03-14)

    1. He ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me.

      ![](http://static.politifact.com/mediapage/jpgs/politifact-logo-big.jpg) ![](https://dhpikd1t89arn.cloudfront.net/rating_images/politifact/tom-false.jpg) Looking to put a positive spin on a stunning political upset, President Donald Trump said Democrat Conor Lamb — the yet-to-be-declared winner of last week’s closely watched special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district — "ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me." Trump made the comment at a private fundraiser for Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley a day after the March 13 election, The Washington Post reported. But did Lamb’s campaign actually say "very nice things" about the president, or was this an attempt to minimize a looming Republican loss in a reliably red district? What ... Mpre,...<br> (Published 2018-03-14)

    1. “He ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me,”

      ![](http://static.politifact.com/mediapage/jpgs/politifact-logo-big.jpg) ![](https://dhpikd1t89arn.cloudfront.net/rating_images/politifact/tom-false.jpg) Looking to put a positive spin on a stunning political upset, President Donald Trump said Democrat Conor Lamb — the yet-to-be-declared winner of last week’s closely watched special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district — "ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me." Trump made the comment at a private fundraiser for Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley a day after the March 13 election, The Washington Post reported. But did Lamb’s campaign actually say "very nice things" about the president, or was this an attempt to minimize a looming Republican loss in a reliably red district? What ... Mpre,...<br> (Published 2018-03-14)

    1. ‘He ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me.

      ![](http://static.politifact.com/mediapage/jpgs/politifact-logo-big.jpg) ![](https://dhpikd1t89arn.cloudfront.net/rating_images/politifact/tom-false.jpg) Looking to put a positive spin on a stunning political upset, President Donald Trump said Democrat Conor Lamb — the yet-to-be-declared winner of last week’s closely watched special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district — "ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me." Trump made the comment at a private fundraiser for Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley a day after the March 13 election, The Washington Post reported. But did Lamb’s campaign actually say "very nice things" about the president, or was this an attempt to minimize a looming Republican loss in a reliably red district? What ... Mpre,...<br> (Published 2018-03-14)

    1. And last night, the young man also, h e ran on a campaign, he said very nice things about me.

      ![](http://static.politifact.com/mediapage/jpgs/politifact-logo-big.jpg) ![](https://dhpikd1t89arn.cloudfront.net/rating_images/politifact/tom-false.jpg) Looking to put a positive spin on a stunning political upset, President Donald Trump said Democrat Conor Lamb — the yet-to-be-declared winner of last week’s closely watched special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district — "ran on a campaign that said very nice things about me." Trump made the comment at a private fundraiser for Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley a day after the March 13 election, The Washington Post reported. But did Lamb’s campaign actually say "very nice things" about the president, or was this an attempt to minimize a looming Republican loss in a reliably red district? What ... Mpre,...<br> (Published 2018-03-14)

    1. Over the next six months, Democratic voters will be asked again and again whether their party’s candidates should hew to the center or move to the left.

      I think the frame here makes this a foregone conclusion: It implies that going left will lose votes from the center, so case closed. But what if we reframed the question, to ask whether Democrats should be beholden to corporate interests, or stick to their principles? Whether Democrats who make decisions through triangulation look flighty to voters who want to know where their elected officials stand? Whether boldly proclaiming that Trump is a sociopathic hustler who must be ousted at all costs plays better than saying he's someone Democrats can work with. Guess what the foregone conclusions are to THOSE questions?

    2. Should Democrats Embrace the Center or Abandon It?

      TLDR: Surprise! Last paragraph reads "Insofar as Democrats place a higher priority on purity than viability, they may be risking an indeterminate extension of the Trump era." Also see my annotation below.

    1. But the liberal establishment’s fixation on Facebook’s 2016 sins — first the transmission of fake news and now the exploitation of its data by the Trump campaign or its appendages — still feels like a classic example of blaming something new because it’s new when it’s the old thing that mattered more. Or of blaming something new because you thought that “new” meant “good,” that the use of social-media data by campaigns would always help tech-savvy liberals and not their troglodytic rivals — and the shock of discovering otherwise obscures the more important role that older forms of media played in making the Trump era a reality.

      There are even more straw men than white men on the New York Times op-ed page.

    1. DiGenova and Trump share the view that a faction inside the FBI sought to frame Trump.

      No. No they don't. That's the bullshit line they're peddling. That's what they SAY. That's not "the view" that they "share."

    2. President Trump’s attorneys have provided the special counsel’s office with written descriptions that chronicle key moments under investigation in hopes of curtailing the scope of a presidential interview, according to two people familiar with the situation.

      What does this actually mean? The explanation is actually down here.

    3. Trump’s lawyers hope the evidence eliminates the need to ask the president about some episodes.

      Again with the omniscience! And again with the euphemisms. So the lawyers have sent Mueller a bunch of information about what happened so they don't have to ask Trump who would lie about it. This is actually the lede of the story, if you ask me, followed by the two basic Mueller questions. There's great stuff here, obfuscated by overly great deference to sources.

    4. Special counsel investigators have told Trump’s lawyers that their main questions about the president fall into two simple categories, the two people said: “What did he do?” and “What was he thinking when he did it?”

      These are great questions, so this is great reporting. It also makes pretty clear that the entire story, sourced to "two people familiar with the situation" is based on what Trump's legal team told the Post.

    5. But his lawyers, who are carefully negotiating the terms of a sit-down, recognize the extraordinarily high stakes.

      The reason I point this out is that this implies that his lawyers are terrified he'll lie his ass off. But this sentence neither says that, nor provides attribution. Instead, it's a polite euphemism, stated in the style of the omniscient narrator.

    6. Impressive mind-reading trick!

    1. famously fickle

      So it's OK to describe him with euphemism and alliteration on second reference, but not with the truth, which would be more like "Mr. Trump, who has shown himself to be volatile, unbalanced, and intolerant of anything besides pure sycophancy,"

    1. says the flu vaccine is laced with cancer-causing ingredients.

      It isn't. </a>


      This statement has been analyzed by a member of the International Fact Checking Network. This annotation is provided by Hypothesis as a public service.

    1. “The president is concerned about the viability of this project and the fact that New York and New Jersey have no skin in the game.”

      <font size="+3">FOUR PINNOCHIOS</font> The states committed to funding 50 percent of Gateway costs in 2015. Read the full fact check.


      This statement has been analyzed by a member of the [International Fact Checking Network](https://www.poynter.org/channels/fact-checking). This annotation is provided by Hypothesis as a public service.

    1. "The President is concerned about the viability of this project and the fact that New York and New Jersey have no skin in the game."

      The states committed to funding 50 percent of Gateway costs in 2015. Read the full fact check.


      This statement has been analyzed by a member of the [International Fact Checking Network](https://www.poynter.org/channels/fact-checking). This annotation is provided by Hypothesis as a public service.

    1. Even pessimists acknowledged that Trump’s hard line against Pyongyang, after decades of less forceful U.S. effort, played a significant role in moving one of the world’s most vexing and threatening problems in a potentially positive direction.

      Actually, Korean experts I respect credit it to South Korean President Moon Jae-in -- see, i.e. Tim Shorrock -- who is amazingly not even mentioned in this story. This is pure delusion and White House brown-nosing.

    1. Understanding Student Mobbists

      The headline really says it all. The great David Brooks will apply his lofty intellect to the task of trying to understand the mentality of a mindless mob. That should go well.

    2. the edifice of civilizations is a great gift, which our ancestors gave their lives for

      So we shouldn't try to make it better?

    3. they ALL wound up waist deep in blood

      So walking out of school to protest gun culture... will lead to rivers of blood.

    4. If I could talk to the students

      As Serge Kovaleski, one of your NYT colleagues, tweeted: You should and you could.

    5. the oppressed masses have to mobilize to storm the barricades

      Hyperbole much?

    6. The solutions to injustice and suffering are simple and obvious: Defeat the powerful.

      There's a bit of truth there. Some students do believe that powerful entrenched interests have too much control over this country. Actually.. who would disagree with that?

    7. If reason and deliberation are central to democracy, how on earth did Donald Trump get elected?

      I do not see any logical progression in Brooks's argument here, but that is in fact a very good question.

    8. an educational ideology that taught them that individual reason and emotion were less important than perspectivism

      This is sheer fantasy. Yes, some people have always been aware that perspective matters. But no to everything else.

    9. reason, apparently, ceased to matter.

      Right. Forgot about that.

      SERIOUSLY?

    10. Progress is less about understanding and liking each other and more about smashing structures that others defend.

      This is glib. It assumes some sort of radical change, which is not in evidence beyond a few overhyped anecdotes. And "smashing structures that others defend" sounds so sinister -- unless you realize those structures are things like mass incarceration and endemic sexual harassment. Smash away!

    11. Now the crucial barriers to racial justice are seen not just as individual, but as structural economic structures, the incarceration crisis, the breakdown of family structure.

      Wow. Let's parse that. Brooks is saying that until recently, it was not a widely shared view that structural economic issues and mass incarceration were barriers to racial justice. (Not to mention the police.) This is the height of cluelessness.

      And he adds that "the breakdown of family structure" is also a newly discovered reason, when in fact it's been a condescending explanation from social conservatives for more than five decades.

    1. using clean, renewable hydropower.

      Yes, that is the most relevant thing about Deripaska. His company uses hydropower.

    2. just from a couple of people

      Who are these two people who launched, invented and spread this false narrative? (Is Soros one of them??)

    3. George Soros

      ,,, capped by the obligatory George Soros mention.

    4. The distractions no longer can mask these “unholy alliances.”

      Several paragraphs of Fox News-inspired fantasy follow..

    5. I am personally familiar with this group. Before they moved to their current, bigger ambitions of reversing the U.S. presidential election results, they scurrilously attacked me and others from the shadows for two decades

      So there's a scurrilous secret Deep State and it has victimized Deripaska for two decades. This hardly advances his argument.

    6. When you owe the world $18 trillion, the only way to get them to “pay 2 percent for defense” is to manufacture a boogeyman.

      No boogeyman required, sadly, despite the fact that the U.S. spends more on the military than the next seven countries combined.

    7. increase your defense budget to 2 percent

      This garble here at least assures us that this is all Deripaska. No editing.

      And nobody on the HIll was arguing against increasing the defense budget. More's the pity.

    8. Technology and the disintegration of evidence-based journalism permit a surprisingly small number of individuals to destroy bilateral or multilateral relations.

      That is pure Trumpian "fake news" yelping. Hardly a way to assure readers there was no collusion.

    9. the comedy movie “Wag the Dog,”

      Bill Clinton firing 76 Tomahawk missiles into Afghanistan and Sudan three days after finally admitting that he and Monica Lewinsky had sexual relations is a "Wag the Dog" moment. This is not a "Wag the Dog" moment. This is not a "distraction".

      There may be an element of overreaction, but it is hardly made up.

    10. Oleg DeripaskaFounder of UC Rusal, a large Russian aluminum company

      Calling Deripaska the founder of UC Rusai is accurate, but hardly sufficient. He is, as the Washington Post put it in September, "a shrewd self-made billionaire who has managed to stay on the right side of power, whether by marrying into "the family" of Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin, or by making himself indispensable to its current one, Vladimir Putin."

      It was last September that news broke about Deripaska's long and complicated business relationship with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, one of whom apparently owes the other a lot of money. The Atlantic's Franklin Foer last month called renewed attention to the Manafort-Deripaska connection.

      Manafort, and by extension Deripaska, are central figures in Bob Mueller's investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. For the Daily Caller not to say so up front is in itself indicative of deception.

    1. We sampled all rumor cascades investigated by six independent fact-checking organizations (snopes.com, politifact.com, factcheck.org, truthorfiction.com, hoax-slayer.com, and urbanlegends.about.com) by parsing the title, body, and verdict (true, false, or mixed) of each rumor investigation reported on their websites and automatically collecting the cascades corresponding to those rumors on Twitter.

      I"m confused. If the comparison was between a) Hoaxes so popular they were debunked by overworked fact-checkers and b) The motley collection of news stories that for some reason they fact-checked and found to be accurate... well of COURSE the hoaxes would win out. A better comparison would be between popular hoaxes and BIG news stories. Or am I not understanding this correctly?

    1. According to one account, GCHQ’s then head, Robert Hannigan, passed material in summer 2016 to the CIA chief, John Brennan. The matter was deemed so sensitive it was handled at “director level”. After an initially slow start, Brennan used GCHQ information and intelligence from other partners to launch a major inter-agency investigation.

      11 months later, Jane Mayer in the New Yorker wrote that Hannigan told Brennan about "a stream of illicit communications between Trump’s team and Moscow that had been intercepted." I thought that was new, but Twitter user @empiricalerror set me straight.

    1. Special Counsel Mueller is believed to be investigating a different death that is possibly related to the dossier.

      14,000 or so words in.

    2. Robert Hannigan, then the head of the U.K.’s intelligence service the G.C.H.Q., had recently flown to Washington and briefed the C.I.A.’s director, John Brennan, on a stream of illicit communications between Trump’s team and Moscow that had been intercepted. (The content of these intercepts has not become public.)

      This unsourced bombshell comes after about 10,000 words of this 15,000 word story. Only in the New Yorker.

    1. There may not be a perfect culinary metaphor for the kind of country inclusive nationalists seek to create. But its contours should be obvious. It is a state in which all members have the same rights and opportunities irrespective of the group into which they are born or the culture to which they belong. It is a society in which people feel that they have something important in common because they seek to govern themselves together, pledge to help one another in an hour of need and recognize that these shared commitments are ultimately more consequential than any difference of color or creed. And it is a culture that does not shy away from celebrating the nobility of this collective identity — embracing the nation’s flag not because we claim never to have failed our compatriots in the past but because we aspire to realize a common future fair to all.

      TLDR: Apparently, we need to embrace the flag as a symbol of aspiration. Here's the nut graph, such as it is, fourth from the bottom.

    1. --

      Jenny 8 Lee is adamant that this double dash -- become an em-dash —

  2. Feb 2018
    1. we will identify, on a prospective basis, individuals who receive Disability Insurance benefits under title II of the Social Security Act (Act) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments under title XVI of the Act and who also meet certain other criteria, including an award of benefits based on a finding that the individual's mental impairment meets or medically equals the requirements of section 12.00 of the Listing of Impairments (Listings) and receipt of benefits through a representative payee.

      There is in fact a rule requiring the Social Security Administration to turn over some information for inclusion in background checks. But it's solely to identify people receiving benefits based on their mental impairments, not retirees. See more on Factcheck.org.

    1. despite the White House’s insistence otherwise, the felonies that Manafort is accused of, and the two that Gates pleaded guilty to on Friday, bear directly on the question of Russian collusion.

      This is really a masterpiece in misdirection – and a great example of Glenn Greenwald's axiom that major U.S. media outlets consistently exaggerate and or invent incriminating links between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

      I had only skimmed the latest Manafort indictment when it came out on Friday, so when I read this I did a doubletake: There was information that bore directly on Russian collusion with the campaign?? How did I miss that? So I went back and read it again more carefully and guess what? There was no such thing.

    2. Of course, Manafort wasn’t the only figure in Trump’s campaign with questionable Russian connections.

      And that's it. That's the end of the argument: But consider: 1) There was nothing in Mueller's indictment that was remotely about Russia. 2) It's old news that Manafort at one point mused about getting together with a Russian oligarch close to Putin. Do you feel informed? Or misled?

    3. desperate straits

      Except that rather than being desperate not to get whacked by a Russian mobster, Manafort might just have been engaging in his usual greasy mix of corruption and graft.

    4. and some revelatory journalism

      What Goldberg does here is seamlessly segue from the indictment to, literally, old news: reports from last September and October that Manafort, after becoming chairman of Trump's campaign in April 2016, had raised the idea of offering billionaire Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska "a private briefing". In a series of emails with a with a longtime employee, Manafort had also made sure that the employee was sending Deripaska press clippings about his new role. And he asked “How do we use to get whole.”

      But Manafort's long relationship with Deripaska was more complicated than Goldberg conveys. In fact, it sounds like Manafort is the one who wanted to "get whole" – i.e. that he thought Deripaska owed HIM money, not the other way around.

    5. allowed his campaign to be infiltrated at the highest levels by both alleged and admitted criminals with Russian ties

      This is true! But that's not collusion with the Russians to win the presidency.

    1. VIDEO: GLENN GREENWALD AND JAMES RISEN DEBATE THE TRUMP/RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

      Glenn Greenwald on the unlearned lesson of Iraq. Here's a piece I wrote in 2007 on the same subject.

    1. the mere existence of this question underscores the need for a long overdue moratorium on the blithe characterization of things as “treason”— and for all of us to be far more careful when using that term to describe conduct that we believe is some combination of reprehensible, criminal and perhaps even impeachable.

      Here's the sentence from Steve Vladeck's piece on the misuse of the word "treason" that Glenn Greenwald referenced here.

    1. But if a presidential candidate or his lieutenants secretly work with a foreign government that is a longtime adversary of the United States to manipulate and then win a presidential election, that is almost a textbook definition of treason.

      Listen to Glenn Greenwald's masterful and blistering refutation of this paragraph here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsY70_uIXNc&feature=youtu.be&t=6m44s

      Glenn also cites this passage from Steve Vladeck's piece, Americans have forgotten what 'treason' actually means — and how it can be abused

    1. But as far as embracing views far to the left or right, the Times’ full-time opinion writers have never represented a particularly wide range.

      As Glenn Greenwald tweeted: "Here's Politico's media reporter @mlcalderone (then at the HuffPost) on what a joke it is for NYT op-ed page to boast that it has wide ideological diversity among its columnists. It's one of the most un-diverse major media venues (in all senses) in the US"

    1. I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.

      This is the investigation Mueller took over. Prosecution looks like an afterthought; figuring out what happened (and making sure it can't happen again) seems to be the main goal.

  3. Jan 2018
    1. a Plan to Help Distressed America

      Wow the Times fell for a load of crap. Read the deconstruction of this piece by The Intercept's Rachel Cohen. I'll highlight key bits below, and annotate with some of her analysis.

    2. They could also deliver a windfall, in the form of avoided capital gains taxes, for corporations and financiers who invest in the Opportunity Zones.

      That much is true. As Cohen notes, paraphrasing someone who has actually researched the topic, "that investors may stand to reap major windfalls does not mean that the communities themselves will be better off."

    3. Proponents say the new Opportunity Zones are designed to be more effective than earlier programs, and likely to generate far more investment than congressional scorekeepers predicted in assessing the tax bill.

      This may be one of the most ridiculous and unsupported "proponents say" paragraphs I've read in a long time. Bravo.

    4. Research suggests many previous federal attempts to increase investment in particular regions, such as Clinton-era Enterprise Zones, were largely ineffective.

      This is a throwaway line in the middle of the 25th paragraph of the story.

    5. The effort to create the zones was pushed by an upstart Washington think tank, the Economic Innovation Group, and its patron, the tech mogul Sean Parker, of Napster and Facebook fame, who enlisted Mr. Scott and others to sponsor the legislation.

      Cohen notes: 'The article includes no comments from scholars who have actually studied opportunity zones, and it links to none of the many research studies done on their effectiveness." She then links to one, two, three, four of those, showing "these schemes rarely ever help cities, and often hurt them."

    6. If

      Cohen: "There’s a lot packed into that 'if.'”

    7. attempt to grapple

      As Tankersley himself notes further down: "the idea was never debated on the floor of the House or Senate. It was never promoted by Republican leaders or the White House." Kinda hard to ascribe motive then, isn't it?

    8. “Opportunity Zones,” which will use tax incentives to draw long-term investment to parts of America that continue to struggle with high poverty and sluggish job and business growth

      In fact, as Cohen writes, "years of research that show that so-called opportunity zones do next to nothing to revive distressed areas."

    1. it’s been great to see you today.

      That's the best she can do.

    2. special relationship between the UK and the United States

      Nothing here about liking the man, either.

    3. as you say, we’ve had a great discussion today

      Nothing here about liking the man.

    4. false rumor

      See, i.e.: Inside the Dysfunctional Relationship of Donald Trump and Theresa May by Tim Ross and Margaret Talev of Bloomberg. Don't miss this key paragraph.

    5. I think the feeling is mutual from the standpoint of liking each other a lot

      I like her and she likes me back!

    6. I can tell you it’s true.

      Believe me!

    7. great relationship

      She likes me!

    1. During formal phone calls between the two leaders, May finds it almost impossible to make headway and get her points across, one person familiar with the matter said. Trump totally dominates the discussion, leaving the prime minister with five or ten seconds to speak before he interrupts and launches into another monologue.

      Talk about something having the ring of truth...

    1. Although there are fewer earmarks since Congress adopted the earmark moratorium, far more money has been spent on average for each earmark, with no detailed information provided. In years past, individual locations (e.g., a bike path in a certain city) would appear next to the funding amount. The current trend sees members earmarking funding for an account that is responsible for that sort of spending (in this case, the Heritage Partnership Program), with the funding distributed later, without transparency or accountability.

      Congressional earmarks didn't go away, they just went under cover.

    1. Mr. Trump claimed, with no evidence, that “22 to 24 people came in through” the suspect in the Manhattan truck attack.

      Otherwise excellent NYT analysis leaves out an exchange between Trump and Laura Ingraham in a Nov. 2 interview. Ingraham asked Trump if his statement that Saipov had brought in 23 people was "verified" and Trump acknowledged that it was not: "It's what I heard, it's what I gave. Whether it's 23 or whether it's two, as far as I'm concerned, it's too much, OK?"

    1. President Trump said late Thursday that he had canceled a trip to London because of the cost and “off location” of the new United States Embassy in the city, where he had been expected to face protests

      Trump justifies his decision with an outright lie, and the NYT reporter writes it up dutifully. This was not a hard one to figure out. This is an insult and disservice to readers.

    1. And on Wednesday, Mr. Trump gave seemingly contradictory stances in a matter of seconds.

      And this.

    2. On Tuesday, in a meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers, Mr. Trump signaled a willingness to sign any deal worked out between Democrats and Republicans.“I mean, I will be signing it. I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, gee, I want this or I want that,’” he said. 59 Comments But by Tuesday night, Mr. Trump had declared on Twitter exactly what he wanted:

      Yeah, this.

    3. As they try to find a bipartisan solution on immigration, lawmakers have also had to try to decipher what exactly would be acceptable to Mr. Trump, given that he holds the veto pen.

      You might have said that a bit higher up, so readers could put all this incremental stenography in its proper context.

    4. some liberal Democrats are adamant that they will not vote for a government funding measure without a resolution on immigration

      A bad truncation in an effort to create false balance. No Dems expect a "resolution on immigration," just on DACA.

    5. Mr. Trump’s positions vacillate daily.

      Noted in the ninth paragraph.

    6. ending the diversity visa lottery system

      See my tweet from yesterday on this.

    7. family-based migration

      Such a sanitized way of referring to what Trump calls "chain migration" and baldly lied about on Wednesday, as he repeatedly does. Consider this: . which he once admitted was made up:

    8. convened Tuesday’s session to address the fate of young undocumented immigrants

      That is a very charitable way of putting it. A more accurate description would be that he a) put on a show to impress the media, which worked; and b) made it clear he wanted to hold those young immigrants hostage for his wall.

    9. Trump’s recent overtures of bipartisanship

      Yes, Trump seemed open to letting Dreamers stay -- but only in return for concessions that most Democrats consider noxious and crazy. That may be what passes for bipartisan at the New York Times -- and, admittedly, with a handful of tone-deaf congressional leaders -- but it's not much of an overture by any normal standard.

    10. House Republicans’ Hard-Line Immigration Stand Clashes With Trump Overture

      No, the New York Times interpreted what was largely an incoherent and self-contradicting performance by Trump as a genuine overture. The actual Republican actually running Congress were under no such illusion. Compare CNN's Trump contradicts self repeatedly in immigration meeting with the Times's much more definitive but unsupported conclusion that Trump "appeared open to negotiating a sweeping immigration deal that would eventually grant millions of undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship,"

    1. INGRAHAM: Will -- will you require that, if any amnesty talks will -- will require chain migration to end? TRUMP: I don't think any Republican would vote for anything having to do with leaving chain migration. Chain migration is a disaster for this country and it's horrible. I mean, just take a look at him. Twenty-three people -- potentially, 23 people... INGRAHAM: Is that verified? TRUMP: It's what I heard, it's what I gave. Whether it's 23 or whether it's two, as far as I'm concerned, it's too (ph) much (ph), OK?

      Regardless, Trump has repeated this as fact many times since. See, i.e. here.

    1. Steele’s allegations — in addition to other information, including intelligence intercepts and an Australian diplomat’s account of a conversation with a Trump adviser in a London wine bar — prompted the FBI to open a counterintelligence investigation into Trump associates in July 2016, according to current and former officials. The Australian warning was first reported by the New York Times.

      The New York Times says something very different.

    1. Current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the investigation say that the federal inquiry did not start with the dossier, nor did it rely on it. Rather, they have said, the dossier and the F.B.I.’s discussions with Mr. Steele merely added material to what American law enforcement and spy agencies were gleaning from other sources.

      Here is the New York Times version of the timeline.

    1. Critics of the federal investigation into claims President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russian government have latched onto a theory that the inquiry only began after the FBI received a controversial dossier funded by Democrats and littered with unproven allegations. But that, too, is unproven.

      Here, Politifact finds this timeline unproven.

  4. Dec 2017
    1. Mr. Mueller’s investigators have learned through witnesses and documents that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the Trump transition team to lobby other countries to help Israel, according to two people briefed on the inquiry. Investigators have learned that Mr. Flynn and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, took the lead in those efforts. Mr. Mueller’s team has emails that show Mr. Flynn saying he would work to kill the vote, the people briefed on the matter said.

      So Jared was the mastermind.

  5. Nov 2017
    1. TELL Us THE TRUTH, UNCLE SAM (By John Barron)

      Reader's Digest article inserted into Congressional Record.

    1. There is little doubt that much of the orientation ofpost-secondary sports is sordid. After some reading about theregulators of ,the sports, I have little doubt that the various groupsengaged in promoting competitioh should have their motives, aswell as their modus operandi, analyzed.

      Joseph Froomkin on collegiate sports.

    1. We found that one in five of the coalition strikes we identified resulted in civilian death, a rate more than 31 times that acknowledged by the coalition. It is at such a distance from official claims that, in terms of civilian deaths, this may be the least transparent war in recent American history. Our reporting, moreover, revealed a consistent failure by the coalition to investigate claims properly or to keep records that make it possible to investigate the claims at all. While some of the civilian deaths we documented were a result of proximity to a legitimate ISIS target, many others appear to be the result simply of flawed or outdated intelligence that conflated civilians with combatants. In this system, Iraqis are considered guilty until proved innocent. Those who survive the strikes, people like Basim Razzo, remain marked as possible ISIS sympathizers, with no discernible path to clear their names.

      Here's the nut graph.

    1. But I want to say something very clearly, and this is going to be very disappointing to the people protesting the president and the people in Congress like Senator Schumer who have attacked the president for his lawful and necessary action.  The president's powers here are beyond question.  The president has the authority under the INA Section 8 U.S.C. 1182F to suspend the entry of aliens into this country.   And he has Article 2 foreign powers to also engage in conducting border control and immigration control into this country.  Those powers are substantial.  They present the very apex of presidential authority.  And so, we are contemplating new and additional actions to ensure that our immigration system does not become a vehicle for admitting people into our country who are hostile to this nation and its values.  

      Stephen Miller to Fox News on Feb. 12, 2017: "The president's powers here are beyond question."

    1. MILLER: It is dishonest. It is false. And it is wrong. And I will also say this because we talked a lot about the issue of judicial activism.  Sean, an unelected judge does not have the right to remake the immigration laws and policies for the entire United States of America. HANNITY: Well said. MILLER: This power is vested in the president. This was an issue put before 300 million American citizens, and they voted with their ballots in November to put in place new, tough vetting measures so that we don't end up like we see in parts of France and Germany and Belgium with a permanent problem of radicalism in our country, where it is a regular feature of our lives, where we have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars long-term dealing with the effect of an immigration system that is not properly controlled!

      Stephen Miller tells Fox News's Sean Hannity on Feb. 8, 2017: "This power is vested in the president."

    1. MILLER: Well, I think that it’s been an important reminder to all Americans that we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become in many case a supreme branch of government. One unelected judge in Seattle cannot remake laws for the entire country. I mean this is just crazy, John, the idea that you have a judge in Seattle say that a foreign national living in Libya has an effective right to enter the United States is -- is -- is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.

      Stephen Miller on CBS on Feb. 12, 2017: "we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power"

    1. Well we’re considering all of our options right now Chuck. That includes: you can continue the appeal in the ninth. You can seek an emergency stay at the Supreme Court. You can have a trial hearing on the merits at the district level. Or you can take in en banc for the emergency hearing also at the ninth circuit and yes, you could pursue additional executive actions. The bottom line is that we are pursuing every single possible action to keep our country safe from terrorism and I also want to be clear we’ve heard a lot of talk about how all the branches of government are equal. That’s the point. They are equal. There’s no such thing as judicial supremacy. What the judges did, both at the ninth and at the district level was to take power for themselves that belongs squarely in the hands of the president of the United States.

      Stephen Miller declares: "There's no such thing as judicial supremacy."

    1. TRUMP:  I think the judge has been extremely hostile to me.  I think it has to do with perhaps the fact that I’m very, very strong on the border. Very, very strong on the border.  And he has been extremely hostile to me.   This is a case that in our opinion should have been won a long time ago.  It's a case we should have won on summary judgment.  We're nothing with this.  This is a very -- we have a very hostile judge.   Now, he is Hispanic, I believe.  He is a very hostile judge to me.  I said it loud and clear.

      Trump repeats: "He is Hispanic... He is a very hostile judge to me."

    1.  And they’re taking away our weapons one by one, that’s what they’re doing.  And you know it and I know it, and you people have been very unhappy for a long period of time.

      Trump told a police chief convention that judges were tying their hands.

    1. A clearly irritated Trump told his supporters to attack journalists who ask questions about the lawsuit and his comments about the judge."The people asking the questions-those are the racists," Trump said. "I would go at 'em."Suggesting a broader campaign against the media, Trump said the campaign should also actively criticize television reporters. "I'd let them have it," he said, referring to those who Trump portrayed as hypocrites.

      Trump ordered his top supporters to question Curiel's credibility and accuse reporters of being the racists, not him.

    1. We have a very hostile judge because to be honest with you the judge should have thrown the case out on summary judgment but because it was me and because there's a hostility toward me by the judge, tremendous hostility, beyond belief, I believe he happens to be Spanish, which is fine. He's Hispanic, which is fine, and we haven't asked for recusal which we may do but we have a judge who's very hostile. Should have been thrown out.

      Trump speaking at a political rally on February 27, 2016, in Arkansas.

    1. You know, you said something else about the judge yesterday. You said one of the judges, quote, “I believe he happens to be Spanish which is fine. He’s Hispanic, which is fine. We haven’t asked for a recusal which we may do.” Why would you need to ask for a recusal and what does his ethnicity have to do with it? DONALD TRUMP: Because I think he's been very, very unfair with us. I think the judge has been extremely unfair. This is a case that many, many, many people said should have been thrown out on summary judgment. We have 98 percent approval from the people that took it. CHUCK TODD: And you think it's because he's Hispanic? DONALD TRUMP: We have an A from the Better Business Bureau. This is a case that should've been-- well, because of the wall and because of everything that's going on with Mexico and all of that, I think it's frankly, look, this is a judge who I believe has treated me very, very unfairly. This is a case that should have been thrown out a long time ago, in the opinion of many great lawyers.

      Trump on Curiel, on Meet the Press

    1. We also have to come up with punishment that's far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting right now. They'll go through court for years. And at the end, they'll be -- who knows what happens. We need quick justice and we need strong justice -- much quicker and much stronger than we have right now. Because what we have right now is a joke and it's a laughingstock. And no wonder so much of this stuff takes place.

      Trump on the New York truck bomber case:

    1. GENERAL MCMASTER: What the President wants is to secure the American people from this threat and from mass murderers like this, murderers like this. And so what he's asked us for are options to take a look to assess if our tremendous law enforcement teams and our judicial system has all the tools they need to be able to combat this threat to the American people. So what we owe him now is we owe him options -- you know, options to take a look at to see if this is the time to reassess, change our capabilities in this area and the area of law enforcement in particular.

      Far from playing down Trump's more extreme tweets, national security adviser H.R. McMaster indicated to the White House press corps that a policy planning process is underway to enact them.

  6. Oct 2017
    1. The only public statement occurred a year later when the Justice Department put out a little-noticed press release in August 2015, just days before Labor Day.

      As the Washington Post's Erik Wemple wrote: "There were three press releases on the Mikerin case — one covering the charges in the case; one covering the plea deal; and one covering the sentencing. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland published them; they were hosted on the site of the FBI’s Washington field office; and, as the Hill noted, Justice Department headquarters issued a release on the plea deals."

    1. As of May 2, 2017, over 30 percent of the real estate transactions reported under the GTOs involved a beneficial owner or purchaser representative that had been the subject of unrelated Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) filed by U.S. financial institutions. In other words, the beneficial owners or purchaser representatives in a significant portion of transactions reported under the GTO had been previously connected to a wide array of suspicious activities, including: • A beneficial owner suspected of being connected to over $140 million in suspicious financial activity since 2009 and who sought to disguise true ownership of related accounts. • Two beneficial owners (husband and wife) involved in a $6 million purchase of two condominiums were named in nine SARs filed from 2013 – 2016 in connection with allegations of corruption and bribery associated with South American government contracts.• A beneficial owner suspected of being connected to a network of individuals and shell companies that received over $6 million in wire transfers with no clear business purpose from entities in South America. Much of these funds were used for payments to various real estate related businesses. • Eleven SARs filed from 2008 through 2015 named either the buyer (an LLC), beneficial owner, or purchaser’s representative involved in a GTO-reported $4 million purchase of a residential unit. Law enforcement records indicate that both the purchaser’s representative and his business associate were associated with a foreign criminal organization involved in narcotics smuggling, money laundering, health care fraud, and the illegal export of automobiles

      Those are some amazing statistics.

    1. The relationship between corporate profits and worker compensation broke down in the late 1980s.

      This is true, and alarming. What follows is a crass attempt to suggest that even further increasing corporate profits will fix that, instead of simply making it worse.

      See, for starters, Hedrick Smith: Think corporate tax cuts will mean more jobs? Here’s how you’re being conned: US News on Trump's Tax Cut Plan Will Fuel Stock Buybacks; Institute for Policy Studies' Corporate Tax Cuts Boost CEO Pay, Not Jobs.

    1. Republican political leaders these past six years have built up a massive, unprecedented credibility deficit, such that even their most straightforward assertions invite close bullshit inspection. By contrast, Democratic bullshit tends to center more around hypocrisy and political cowardice. Trying to find equivalency between the two would still be a mistake – and could lead to catty, inside-baseball gotcha journalism rather than genuine bullshit-calling.

      Still true! Just make it 14 years instead of 6 with an extraordinary acceleration in the past 1.

    1. Trump Lobs Praise, and Paper Towels, to Puerto Rico Storm Victims

      The Times continues to wrestle with how to cover Trump spectacles... and still errs on the side of covering them as if Trump were a normal president, simply describing what he did, rather than putting it into its crucial context.

      Additionally, the story stands as a great example of the Politico-ization of political news. It's all superfice. All optics. And it barely even alludes to the enormous human suffering and insufficient federal response that the Times has in fact covered elsewhere.

      It compares poorly with, say, Daniel Dale's story in the Toronto Star. The headline there: In bizarre visit, Donald Trump compares Puerto Rico to ‘a real catastrophe like Katrina’ — and congratulates himself

    2. it had its peculiar moments

      This is such an understatement. It was ludicrous and bizarre: Trump acting like he is Santa Claus, with the assembled Puerto Ricans as props. See for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc2jyKaq_lg

    3. She was not mollified after meeting him.

      This story was all about political optics, not the reality on the ground. So what little context there was, was about how Trump lashed out at the San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz. And even there, the Times only later noted that Trump had earlier, in error, told reporters that the mayor had come around.

    4. This time

      To someone's credit, the Times cut from an earlier version a ridiculously unnecessary (and context-lacking) paragraph about Melania Trump's outfits: "Melania Trump, the first lady, accompanied the president, as she has on previous visits to storm-ravaged areas. She wore a navy blue sweater and pants, and stiletto heels, as she left the White House. But, as on earlier trips, she changed while en route into more practical boots and her own baseball cap."

    5. Shortly after Mr. Trump departed the island, Governor Ricardo Rosselló told a news conference in San Juan that deaths related to Hurricane Maria had risen to 34.

      This is where some truth-squadding is required, but Landler writes as if the Times were operating in a vacuum of actual information. This is his editors' fault. Many other Times reporters have chronicled the wildly insufficient federal response over the past two weeks.

    6. they should be proud that only 16 people were known to have died in Hurricane Maria

      The Times may be thinking that what Trump said is self-evidently insane, but it still owes the reader an explanation, as unwieldy as such an explanation will be. The explanation, in part: "pride" is an inappropriate reaction to a death toll; the actual death toll isn't in; "thousands" did not die in Katrina, it was somewhere under 2,000; the fact that Maria wasn't as deadly as Katrina was mostly in act-of-god territory rather than act-of-man territory; the most charitable analysis is that he was comparing the reaction of his administration and Puerto Rican authorities with that of Bush and Louisiana authorities, but there's no indication that any actions before or after Maria reduced fatalities; indeed, the big problem is that the relief efforts have been and continue to be "slow and inadequate."

    7. “You can be very proud of your people and all of our people working together.”

      This wasn't a verbal slip. He said it over and over and over again. See this part of the transcript of his comments.

    8. “The first responders, the military, FEMA — they have done an incredible job in Puerto Rico,” Mr. Trump continued. “And whether it’s her or anybody else,” he said, referring to Mayor Cruz, “they’re all starting to say it.”

      This is totally unrebutted -- both that responders have don an "incredible job" and that Cruz now thinks so.

      In summary, this is a great example of the Politico-ization of political news. It's superfice, punctuated by insidery shorthand.

    9. Trump, in Puerto Rico, Compares Death Toll to Katrina’s and Says Residents Should Be ‘Proud’

      This story is truly a case study in how not to cover Trump. It's stenography without context -- which was bad enough with a "normal" president.

    10. She wore a navy blue sweater and pants, and stiletto heels, as she left the White House. But, as on earlier trips, she changed while en route into more practical boots and her own baseball cap.

      This is only relevant, at best, if you consider the subtext, which was the much-criticized photo of her heading off to Texas in stilletos. But it doesn't belong in this story at all, really. It's just easier to write that than to explain complicated things.

    11. The president has gotten more comfortable with these visits,

      What does that even mean?

    12. In Puerto Rico, Mr. Trump’s schedule will limit his exposure to the public.

      Good of them to point it out, but what does that mean? He won't see x, y, and z would be helpful here.

    13. But the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, complained that the response in Puerto Rico fell short of that in Texas or Florida.

      So after more than a week of covering the insufficient federal response, the best rebuttal the NYT can come up with is a lame paraphrase from the mayor of San Juan?

    14. proud that only 16 people died in Hurricane Maria, compared with the “thousands” killed in “a real catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina.”

      The Times may be thinking that quote is self-evidently insane, but it still owes the reader an explanation, as unwieldy as such an explanation will be. The explanation: "pride" is an inappropriate reaction to a death toll; the actual death toll isn't in; "thousands" did not die in Katrina, it was somewhere under 2,000; the fact that Maria wasn't as deadly as Katrina was mostly in act-of-god territory rather than act-of-man territory; the most charitable analysis is that he was comparing the reaction of his administration and Puerto Rican authorities with that of Bush and Louisiana authorities, but there's no indication that any actions before or after Maria reduced fatalities; indeed, the big problem is that the relief efforts have been and continue to be "slow and inadequate."

    1. Melania Trump, the first lady, accompanied the president, as she has on previous visits to storm-ravaged areas. She wore a navy blue sweater and pants, and stiletto heels, as she left the White House. But, as on earlier trips, she changed while en route into more practical boots and her own baseball cap.

      Mercifully, this was cut.

    1. “I think she’s come back a long way,” the president said. “I think it’s now acknowledged what a great job we’ve done.” He asserted that the relief effort was as competent as those in Texas and Florida, and he added, “It’s actually a much tougher situation.”

      This quote was later excised.

    1. If you look at the -- every death is a horror. But if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died, and you look at what happened here with, really, a storm that was just totally overpowering -- nobody has ever seen anything like this. What is your death count, as of this moment -- 17? PARTICIPANT: Sixteen certified. THE PRESIDENT: Sixteen people certified. Sixteen people versus in the thousands. You can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people working together. Sixteen versus literally thousands of people. You can be very proud. Everybody around this table and everybody watching can really be very proud of what's taken place in Puerto Rico.

      I'm not sure anything this inappropriate has ever been said by a president touring a humanitarian disaster.

  7. Sep 2017
  8. Aug 2017
    1. By not monitoring those financial instruments, investigators will miss out on most sales of new condos, said Alan Lips, a Miami accountant.

      As opposed to cashier’s checks, personal check, business checks, or certified checks.

    1. It’s also a hard truth that the window for having these debates is vanishingly small. We won’t be having any kind of public policy debate after this emergency subsides; the media will be back to obsessively covering Trump’s tweets and other palace intrigues. So while it may feel unseemly to be talking about root causes while people are still trapped in their homes, this is realistically the only time there is any sustained media interest whatsoever in talking about climate change. It’s worth recalling that Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord — an event that will reverberate globally for decades to come — received roughly two days of decent coverage. Then it was back to Russia round-the-clock.

      Seize the moment!

    1. formulated to ease the burden of those paying taxes rather than improve the lives of those receiving benefits

      Sums things up very nicely indeed.

  9. Jul 2017
    1. And he has embarked on a campaign to discredit the investigators before they can even get very far in their investigation, hoping to do to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, what the Clintons did to Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel.

      This is an epically flawed analogy, and Peter Baker, as much as anyone, knows it. Whose idea was this story??? As Baker points out later on, the Clintons didn't fight the first special counsel, Robert Fiske. And they only started going after Ken Starr once Starr emerged as freakishly obsessed with finding something anything he could accuse them of -- ending up, of course, with Bill Clinton lying about sex. In short, they attacked him because he was a partisan hack who used grand-jury leaks to smear them and would stop at nothing. Hardly the same as the Mueller investigation.

    1. Mr. Trump needed something substantive to prove he was making progress, according to White House aides.

      Don't you kind of want to know a bit more about the sourcing here? What kind of aides? What is their motivation in saying this to the New York Times? So much of the Trump news is coming from vaguely described anonymous somethings, it starts to lose credibility.

    2. The president — echoing his ill-received remarks about repealing the Affordable Care Act — has told people around him that he did not expect the process to be this difficult, according to one longtime adviser.

      This is highly amusing. Not credibly sourced, but certainly very credible. And I think it should have been in the lead, explaining how there is no plan and, like SO MANY OTHER THINGS, Trump has realized they are more "difficult" than he anticipated. Although that itself is a euphemism, really, for the fact that he never actually had anything beyond simplistic slogans.

    3. Mr. Trump is most concerned about being able to tell voters his plan hit the $1 trillion mark

      How can Glenn Thrush possibly know what Trump is "most concerned" about? Consider: What people around Trump say about what he's thinking is often contradicted by Trump himself -- and that what Trump himself says is often contradicted by reality. Honestly, anytime I see anyone write, without meticulous attribution, about what Trump "thinks" or is "concerned" about I write them off as credulous fools.

    4. Still, the broad outlines are slowly coming into focus. The plan would include “massive permit reform” to cut approval times on major projects to two years or less, from 10; loans and grants to improve rural infrastructure; and funding for “transformative projects,” like broadband and power grid improvements. In addition, the effort would include bolstering existing programs funded through the Finance and Innovation Act and new “incentives” to encourage states and localities to bankroll their own projects, officials said.

      OK the entire story up until now has said there is no plan, and in fact total chaos. But this paragraph suggests consensus around a number of elements. Admittedly, they are wildly vague, but where is this coming from? Note the use of "air quotes" and zero attribution. Confusing.

    5. Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, is skeptical of wedding a tax overhaul and infrastructure — or of any deal that would require him to compromise with Democrats.

      I actually like how understated this is. There is a place for that, and this is fine.

    6. Its hybrid nature is its greatest virtue. It’s also a drawback. Democrats and centrist Republicans remain skeptical of its limited scope. House conservatives remain hostile toward any big, new federal funding program.

      Virtue to who? Drawback to who? And this paragraph completely ignore the chief and very legitimate progressive concern that, to the extent there is any substance at all to Trump's infrastructure push, it is a bait-and-switch privatization scheme that would turn over government assets to Trump cronies. I understand Glenn Thrush is busy, but still. Go read Jefferson Morley or David Cay Johnston -- or sign up for In the Public Interest's newsletter.

    7. The collapse of his health care overhaul effort seemed to clear one item out of the way. But it also raised serious doubts about the ability of Republicans to pass anything other than regulatory rollbacks or routine spending bills.

      Here is an opposite problem: This story basically says, offhand: Trump's repeal of Obamacare is dead and gone and now Congress will move on to other things. The latest NYT story on health legislation on Thursday -- read it here -- said Trump and Senate Republicans want it taken up again next week. So either Glenn Thrush and the rest of the NYT Washington bureau known Trumpcare is dead and gone and off the table, and just aren't brave enough to tell the public -- or this is irresponsible shorthand.

    8. has yet to produce the detailed plan he has promised to deliver “very soon,” and the president has yet to even name any members to a new board he claimed would green-light big projects

      Again, good stuff -- but why "let the reader" figure out what is really going on, which is that there is zero evidence that there was ever any semblance of a plan. That wouldn't be hyperbole.

    9. It awaits the resolution of tough negotiations over the budget, the debt ceiling, a tax overhaul, a new push to toughen immigration laws — and the enervating slog to enact a replacement for the Affordable Care Act.

      Might be worth mentioning here that, given exactly zero major legislative achievements in six months, there's no sign he'll accomplish any of them. This sort of suggests that infrastructure will actually happen after these are taken care of. That is "normal" talk. This ain't normal.

    10. fast becoming an afterthought

      This assumes it was actually a serious thought at some point. This is a perfect example of how despite doing an excellent job of pointing out Trump's failings, it still reverts too much to the presidential norm. There is no evidence that Trump ever had more than a slogan. His whole campaign was a big con, and making it sound like he ever seriously considered this is giving him way too much credit.

    11. Trump’s ‘Great National Infrastructure Program’? Stalled

      "Stalled"?? Seriously? How about "Never Existed" or "Just Another Big Con"?

    1. On the other hand, military commissions are also useful in the proper circumstances, and we need them, too. Those who denigrate these commissions must remember that, while federal courts can handle most terrorism prosecutions, in some cases, military commissions are not only appropriate, but also necessary to convict and neutralize terrorists. Last year, the Obama Administration spent a great deal of time and effort working with Congress to revise the commission rules to ensure that they are consistent with the rule of law. Congress has taken extraordinary steps to reform and improve these commissions since they were first introduced.

      Shot

    2. The truth is that the reformed commissions draw from the same Constitutional protections that underlie our civilian courts – the key difference being that, in commissions, evidentiary rules reflect the realities of the battlefield and the difficulties of conducting investigations in a war zone. I have faith in the framework and promise of our military commissions, which is why I’ve referred six cases to the reformed commissions for prosecution. And I expect to refer additional cases.

      Chaser

  10. www.garrityrights.org www.garrityrights.org
    1. The U.S. Supreme Court then ruled in 1967’s Garrity v. New Jersey that the employees’ statements, made under threat of termination, were compelled by the state in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.  The decision asserted that “the option to lose their means of livelihood or pay the penalty of self-incrimination is the antithesis of free choice to speak or to remain silent.”   Therefore, because the employees’ statements were compelled, it was unconstitutional to use the statements in a prosecution.  Their convictions were overturned.

      FYI

    1. Erik D. Prince, a founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide,

      Even the NYT story linked to here, about Prince, is ridiculously anodyne. It says, for instance:

      Blackwater, the company Mr. Prince built into a corporate symbol of the American war in Iraq, never really recovered from the Nisour Square shootings and its many other controversies and legal woes.

      The real story, as explained by Prince's journalistic scourge, Jeremy Scahill, is more like this:

      Prince founded the notorious private security firm Blackwater, which rose to infamy in September 2007 after its operatives gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians, including a 9-year-old boy in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. Whistleblowers also alleged that Prince encouraged an environment in which Iraqis were killed for sport.

    2. Mr. Prince briefed several White House officials, including General McMaster, said a second person.

      Two other little bits of salient background:

      Washington Post, April 3:

      The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.

      Intercept, March 2016:

      Erik Prince, , founder of the now-defunct mercenary firm Blackwater and current chairman of Frontier Services Group, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies for attempting to broker military services to foreign governments and possible money laundering, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the case.

    3. While he was at Blackwater, the company became involved in one of the most notorious episodes of the Iraq war, when its employees opened fire in a Baghdad square, killing 17 civilians.

      Finally, a mention that Nisour happened "while he was at Blackwater."

    4. Soliciting the views of Mr. Prince and Mr. Feinberg certainly qualifies as out-of-the-box thinking in a process dominated by military leaders in the Pentagon and the National Security Council. But it also raises a host of ethical issues, not least that both men could profit from their recommendations.

      And this is as close as the story comes to opprobrium: that they could profit from their suggestions. More from Scahill:

      After 9/11, Prince worked with the CIA on a secret assassination program .... The Intercept has previously reported on Prince’s efforts to build a private air force for hire and his close ties to Chinese intelligence. One of his latest schemes is a proposal to deploy private contractors to work with Libyan security forces to stop the flow of refugees to Europe.

      Notably, in his January 2017 op-ed outlining his plan to stop the refugee flow from Northern Africa to Europe, Prince warned that "the very existence of the EU in is danger."

      Trump, in a speech said to have been written by Bannon, used similar language just last week in Poland, saying “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive."

    5. the readiness of this White House to turn to business people for help with diplomatic and military problems.

      The understatement, it burns.

    6. Trump Aides Recruited Businessmen to Devise Options for Afghanistan

      Wow. This headline -- and article -- make it sound like the only thing controversial about these guys is that they are selling a plan that would make them a lot of money. One of these guys is Erik D. Prince, arguably the world's most notorious mercenary.

      Ignoring that aspect of Erik Prince is not an oversight; it is a willful misrepresentation, but for what purpose? To not appear overly critical of Trump?

    1. crackdown sends chills

      This wildly speculative story asserts a "crackdown" without one iota of evidence, beyond Trump's big talk. Please see my annotations and highlights below. Most highlights are cllickable. Some are just highlights. This is all a work in progress.

    2. there is a tangible fear of the unknown. No one knows

      Yes, as anxiety grows, there is fear of the unknown that no one knows. This is, as we call it in the business, the "nut graf". But this nut is inedible.

    3. there is tentative optimism that the Justice Department’s National Security Division is sufficiently insulated from political pressure by career prosecutors, and won’t bow to the pressure to be Trump’s attack dogs, should such a specific directive go out

      Wow. Whose "tentative optimism" and how speculative is this?

    4. The obsession with leaks that is acutely felt in the White House has clearly extended to the national security community.

      Not clearly.

    5. constant leaking

      So we agree, there is constant leaking. smh

    6. Reince Priebus has repeatedly asked aides not to leak information at his 8 a.m. daily meeting, and the request has become something of a joke among other aides

      YES! It's a JOKE. That's what the story should have been about, how the Trump "crackdown on leaks" is a joke.

    7. the official stressed the majority of the information was unconfirmed rumor.

      This isn't just bad reporting. It's a cry for help.

    8. more aggressive tone

      Aftergood as usual is exactly right. The tone is more aggressive and especially hostile toward independent reporting. That in no way supports the authors' contention that there's actually been any concrete change.

    9. had heard several other government organizations had started doing the same

      So an anonymous source says he heard something about something. Great reporting!

    10. of the various Russia investigations that have cast a shadow on Trump’s White House

      Ah! OK, so the only supporting evidence for "limiting the number of people read in" is the Russia investigation -- which is now being conducted, in apparently leak-free secrecy, by special counsel Robert Mueller. So it has to do with Mueller actually doing his job, rather than Trump's White House ominously cracking down on leaks.

    11. limiting the number of people even read into certain sensitive matters

      OK, but what matters and how thin?

    12. there was something of a crackdown

      Ha! How can they quote this with a straight face? What crackdown? Leaks are coming faster than ever out of the White House.

    13. subtle and no-so-subtle changes that have led to an increasingly tense and paranoid working environment

      OK so theses unspecified subtle and not-so-subtle changes, what are they? Apparently, judging from the following paragraphs, just a lot of Trump hot air, which like all Trump hot air may not signify anything. So what we have here is: Anonymous national security officials tell us they are worried about Trump's threats. Legit. But not what the headline says.

    14. would make it

      So many speculations here.

    15. had started limiting staff’s access to information

      OK this sounds almost like a fact. But what specifically does that mean?

    16. fears

      There is a lot of "fear' and "concern" but where's the evidence?

    17. seeing new restrictions on who can access sensitive information

      Let's see if there's any supporting evidence for this assertion.

    1. It carried an urgent amber warning, the second-highest rating for the sensitivity of the threat.

      Amber sounds really scary, doesn't it?

    2. Since May, hackers have been penetrating the computer networks of companies that operate nuclear power stations and other energy facilities, as well as manufacturing plants in the United States and other countries.

      Marcy's very good point is that while this lead gives the impression that the hackers are hacking into the controls of nuclear facilities, that is in fact not what the story says if you read it carefully.

    3. In retrospect, Mr. Wellinghoff said that attack should have foreshadowed the threats the United States would face on its own infrastructure.

      As Marcy points out, she is not arguing that Russian spying on how our nuclear facilities work is not without risk.

      It does carry risks that they are collecting the information so they can one day sabotage our facilities. But if we want to continue spying on North Korea’s or Iran’s nuclear program, we would do well to remember that we consider spying on nuclear facilities — even by targeting the engineers that run them — squarely within the bounds of acceptable international spying. By all means we should try to thwart this presumed Russian spying. But we should not suggest — as the NYT seems to be doing — that this amounts to sabotage, to the kinds of things we did with StuxNet, because doing so is likely to lead to very dangerous escalation.

      And it’s not just me saying that. Robert M. Lee, who works on cyber defense for the energy industry and who recently authored a report on Crash Override, Russia’s grid-targeting sabotage tradecraft (and as such would have been an obvious person to cite in this article) had this to say:

      So while the threat to nuclear from cyber is a real concern because of impact it’s very improbable and “what about Stuxnet” is a high bar

      Or said more simply: phishing emails are lightyears removed from “what about Stuxnet” arguments. It’s simply otherworldly in comparison.

      There’s one more, very real reason why the NYT should have been far more responsible in clarifying that this is collection, not sabotage. Among the things Shadow Brokers, with its presumed ties to Russia, has been threatening to expose is “compromised network data from Russian, Chinese, Iranian, or North Korean nukes and missile programs.” If the NYT starts inflating the threat from cyber collection on nuclear facilities, it could very easily lead to counter-inflation, with dangerous consequences for the US and its ability to monitor our adversaries.

      There is very real reason to be concerned that Russia — or some other entity — is collecting information on how our nuclear and other power facilities work. But, as Lee notes, conflating that with StuxNet is “otherworldly.”

    4. In some cases, the hackers also compromised legitimate websites that they knew their victims frequented — something security specialists call a watering hole attack.

      Here's Marcy:

      That is, even while screaming “Amber Russian bear OMIGOSH StuxNet!!” the article admitted that this is not StuxNet. This amounts to spies, quite possibly Russian, “hunting SysAdmins,” just like the United States does (of course, the US and its buddy Israel also assassinate nuclear engineers, which for all its known assassinations, Russia is not known to have done).

      That distinction is utterly critical to make, no matter how much you want to fearmonger with readers who don’t understand the distinction.

      There is spying — the collection of information on accepted targets. And there is sabotage — the disruption of critical processes for malicious ends.

      This is spying, what our own cyber doctrine calls “Cyber Collection.”

      Cyber Collection: Operations and related programs or activities conducted by or on behalf of the United States Government, in or through cyberspace, for the primary purpose of collecting intelligence – including information that can be used for future operations – from computers, information or communications systems, or networks with the intent to remain undetected. Cyber collection entails accessing a computer, information system, or network without authorization from the owner or operator of that computer, information system, or network or from a party to a communication or by exceeding authorized access. Cyber collection includes those activities essential and inherent to enabling cyber collection, such as inhibiting detection or attribution, even if they create cyber effects. ( C/NF)

    5. Hackers Are Targeting Nuclear Facilities, Homeland Security Dept. and F.B.I. Say

      "NYT fearmongers nukes" is how blogger Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel) puts it in a great takedown post of this story, which I am turning into annotations as a proof of concept.

    1. Bad editing transformed a good story into stenography.

    2. Donald Trump, in Poland, Urges West to ‘Defend Our CivilizationAsks if West Has the ‘Will to Survive’

      So actually the editors took out the self-evidently hyperbolic and ambiguous "Defend Our Civilization" in the headline, and subbed in "Will to Survive" which is nonsensical but precisely what Trump would have wanted in the headline.

    3. July 6, 2017

      The way Newsdiffs works is the pink stuff was in an earlier version, but deleted. The green stuff has been added. As a result, the "highlighted" bits by me are either orange (where I'm highlighting bits that were deleted) or yellow-green (where I'm highlighting bits that remained.)

    4. “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive,” he said. “Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”

      What does that even mean? The story now simply regurgitates Trump.

    5. He went on to employ the same life-or-death language as in his inauguration speech, which promised a war against the “American carnage” of urban crime.

      Why cut this?

    6. And although he spoke in Krasinski Square, where a monument commemorates the 1944 Warsaw uprising against the Nazis, he skipped a visit to a museum devoted to a 1943 uprising by Jews who had been forced into a ghetto.

      This was moved way down, apparently. But it's a seminal contrast with his talk about having the will to triumph over evil. See, i.e., this terrifyingly fascistic tweet of his.

    7. the president declared rhetorical war on a broad array of foreign and domestic forces that he said were aligned against him

      Again, a good explanation of what he was doing, rather than a mindless recitation of his nonsense.

    8. Trump, in Poland, Asks if West Has the ‘Will to Survive’

      This headline begs for some explanation. The "will to survive"? Of course the West has the "will to survive." What the hell does he really mean? It would be nice if the story explained that.

    9. cast himself as a defender of Western values in a clash of civilizations during a dark and confrontational speech in Warsaw on Thursday, rebuking the news media, American intelligence agencies and Barack Obama

      This deleted phrasing is much better than what ended up in the story: Rather than simply quoting Trump's words, it makes clear that they were hyperbolic and dark. I wish we could tell who edited this.

    1. June:

      The mewling sycophancy of this particular tweet begs a short discussion at least.

    2. Trump has never had a plan for dealing with North Korea

      On the one hand, this is a wonderfully bold and accurate headline from WaPo. Bravo!

      But on the other, the story is really a devastating look at how Trump said solving North Korea was easy and was a sign of Obama's impotence, and now he's acknowledging it's hard and he's got nothing.